


The Dark House

by beekeepercain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, Gen, Mark of Cain, Post-Episode: s10e23 Brother's Keeper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-02 02:05:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4041547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beekeepercain/pseuds/beekeepercain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Even if I remove Dean from the playing field, we're still left with you: loyal, dogged Sam, who I suspect will never rest until he sets his brother free - will never rest until his brother is free of the Mark, which simply cannot happen, lest the Darkness be set free."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dark House

**Author's Note:**

> Someone asked a question, and a part of me wishes I never answered it. Here's the answer.

* * *

 

The windows glowed a shade of blue, as if twilight was settling. Yet there was no twilight here, and the blue glow came through darkness, a vast endlessness that spread behind the light curtains in this mock house. When Sam ran his fingertips across the cloth, he could feel that it wasn't real. He'd been there for a long, long while now. Perhaps years already.

There was a kitchen behind him, a kitchen where food had never been prepared. Hunger had ached within him for the time it had taken his body to realise that he couldn't starve, that in this place and for the curse that branded him, famine couldn't reach him anymore. His ears ached when they picked up the sounds from the corridor, step by step by step by step closer to their destination: a moment of silence took over before he heard the door's lock again. The steps retreated back to the bedroom. Dean hadn't come out in months for anything else.

Next to the kitchen was the dining room. The empty vase on the table had been destroyed such a long time ago that Sam barely remembered what it had looked like. The same went for every decoration in the house, even for the mirror that still hung in the corridor, shattered fittingly for their broken images. No light in any of the rooms would turn on anymore, and so the only source of light was the never-ending ominous glow from outside, a gentle lie wrapping them up in its embrace. There was nothing out there, and the house wasn't real.

 

* * *

 

Dean's mind was a heated blur. For a while, he'd had peace, but the peace had shattered again like it always did. He couldn't shake the fever anymore, yet he couldn't die to it either, so it only made him sicker by the day and would continue to do so until he let go. In his dreams, when he unexpectedly fell asleep after so many wakeful hours that he wouldn't have been able to count them even if there had been some indicator for him to relate them to, he could feel blood flowing through his fingers and fresh, stringy flesh squish in his grip as he tore it out of countless bodies. He bit and tore into those faceless dying masses, the smell of copper so overhelmingly intoxicating that his body responded to it mercilessly with sexual arousal, and he could go on with it until his lust for it grew too strong and woke him up, mouth gaping to a sound a human being wouldn't have been able to make, his own skin under his nails and bloodstains in the sheets. He panted until his heart stopped, skipped enough beats to resume a painful steady rhythm again, his whole chest aching with insatiable need, a desire or an urge that he couldn't control.

A part of him felt the other presence in the house, but it was like the brand in Sam's flesh made him an undesirable target - yet day by day, the need in Dean cared less, and every unreliable beat within his tortured body counted time to the moment his lust for death would become greater than the Mark's connection with another.

And he waited, mind too tired for care or guilt - he'd been driven mad by this long before he'd been brought here.

A lock and a box and a box and a lock and a key and another box for the key without a key. For the good of everyone, to keep the Light where it belonged.  
God's work.

They were doing God's work here.

 

* * *

 

It was a distinctive burn, like thirst in the middle of an endless desert - a pull within Sam's body that echoed to his soul, a numbing poison that ran deeper than his blood could penetrate. He bowed his head to it, body trembling with need that he'd never once satisfied, but he could feel the animal in him respond to the call and his nails dragged marks to the frames of the window, the dark soft wood that didn't exist if it wasn't for his senses believing in its presence.

Today was different, the currents in the air spoke as much: out of the endless flow of unmarked, undefined days, this one stood out. The steps from the bedroom's doorway ignored the gateway to freedom from this place, the man responsible for them finally ready to bypass what he already knew to be a pointless, worthless ritual.  
Even in the dim light Sam could make apart the paleness, the sickness upon Dean's features, but the man smiled. He smiled back: their hands joined, Dean's nails in his flesh and the tug of them pretending its purpose wasn't to break skin, and they embraced one another, red crescents over Sam's wrists.

He closed his eyes.

"How's my baby brother? Still nothing in the window?"

"You didn't go for the door."

Dean's chuckle was dry and sounded like it came from a throat full of grave dirt.  
"I came for you."

His breathing was heavy, irregular and wild. Sam shivered, pressing closer to the heat of his body for comfort and safety and love that had left the man completely. He pretended he could still feel it echo somewhere deep down there.

"How long has it been, Sammy?"

"Days."

The older tilted his head almost as if to lean it towards Sam, but there was something inhuman in the movement that only served as a painful reminder that what the younger was looking for wasn't there at all. This was the Mark, this wasn't...

Dean pulled away - the warmth from him ceased immediately with no memory of it remaining for Sam to cling onto. Their eyes met, both pairs without light in them, barely even the reflections of the window behind Sam's back could be made apart from the dullness of Dean's gaze. Dean sniffed, shifted his weight from one leg to the other, and reached a hand out between them.  
"I need..." he began, but didn't have the words to finish the sentence.

There was only one thing Dean needed. He'd been driven beyond his breaking point much before they'd arrived here, and Sam was surprised it had taken him this long to give in.

"I can't die," he replied quietly in turn, preparing for whatever would come next.

 

* * *

 

Caged animals.

Dean ran his wet fingers across his lips, body numb with adrenaline and pleasure and mind equally so with trauma; his eyes sought something invisible from the walls, ignoring the splatters of blood upon the white paint. The table had been turned over. Sam's unmoving, torn body had a splintered chair leg standing out of it, but he was still breathing - each breath sent a trickle of fresh blood from within him onto the floor, and sometimes Dean touched it because it was the only warmth he could find, and he couldn't touch the man himself, not yet; nothing in him would move that far.

The euphoria was undeniable, but it came with a cost.  
Sam hadn't even fought back, as if he wasn't as eager to kill as Dean was. Or perhaps he wasn't - the boy had been a saint from birth.

Dean's ears drew back like a dog's at the gurgling sound the other let out.

He'd heal.

 

* * *

 

The floor turned from sticky to dry as Sam rested. He woke up to his own fist tryingly tugging at the wood inside his flesh, and a choked mix of a sob and a gasp left him as he tore it out. What was left behind was intact skin, even though some blood had been drawn out with the wood and he could already feel the bruise forming within him.

Shaking, nauseous, he climbed up to his feet: his shirt made a tearing sound as he moved it off the dried blood and freed himself from the canvas he'd been painted upon. He turned his head slowly around to find Dean, but Dean wasn't there.

The corridor was long and white, its carpet so dark that if there were bloodstains upon it, in the ever dimming light Sam couldn't make them apart. His fingers got stuck in his matted hair and he dragged the strands apart as he looked into the rooms, finally reaching the bedroom and knocking on the closed door. For a while nothing happened: then, from within, a shifting sound could be heard.

"Sammy."

Sam closed his eyes and his heart raced as he waited, but then Dean was there, and this time there was real warmth and love in the way that his arms wrapped around the taller's shaking body.

"I'm sorry, Sammy."

They played chess for some time, slept in a heap in the wide bed instead of separate in different rooms. The bed was long enough for Sam to stretch out in, and his freshly washed body, while still bruised, bore few signs of the mutilation it had gone through. He didn't know if it had taken him another year to pull himself off the floor again, to become intact enough to host a consciousness within, but Dean was still calm now and he doubted it had been more than a couple days.

He smiled, but behind those smiles Sam could see the bottomless guilt he was harboring - and this was the first decade of the centuries to come. They'd tear each other apart countless times before the end would come.

If it ever would.

 

* * *

 

"Do you remember what sun looks like?" Dean asked, eyes tracing the white ceiling above them.

Sam shook his head.  
"Barely. I have this memory - I remember flashes of some days when it was warm, I can remember the green in the trees. But it's been... how long has it been?"

"Days."

The younger nodded to Dean's words. He sighed and then chuckled even though the fever was draining his strength, turning him into a vessel for bloodlust and fury. Dean felt conflicted about it: on one hand, his turn would at least momentarily redeem him from the memories of how he'd torn Sam's body open until he could make apart his insides from within the pale tissue protecting them. He'd stopped before he'd clawed through it, but one day he would; in his dreams he'd gone much further than that, went on until there was nothing to destroy anymore, all the way until he could lie down on the floor and feel it slippery with mangled flesh, shredded organs that were only different from strings of muscle by their colour and texture. On the other hand, it would mark the moment he'd see his brother as gone as he was - as cursed, as irredeemable, as utterly destroyed as he was. And there was still purity within Sam now, something sacred that Dean had wanted to protect for his whole life. When Sam would be done with him that something would be gone forever, and there would be no going back for either of them.

The first of many centuries to come.

Their hands joined, and the sickly moisture that covered Sam's skin reminded Dean that there was no way out for them. He'd chosen this. He'd chosen this not only for himself, but for his brother just the same.

 

* * *

 

The smell of Mexican food had lingered thick in the air as Death had presented his options. Dean's heart had stopped, or so it had felt like; he'd stared, incredulous, for a long while without being able to speak. It was insane - he'd come there so he wouldn't have to kill Sam, and now... now the one being he'd trusted would be able to end this once and for all had given him two equally impossible choices.

To kill Sam and seal his soul to his afterlife in order to make sure that the Mark would still hold back the Darkness, and nothing would ever challenge that again. No more victims to the curse at the cost of that one life and another's freedom. Sam's fate would be kinder than Dean's, Death had promised. He'd die quickly, painlessly, if Dean so chose for him - and he'd be free in death, but unable to reach for his brother ever again.

Or Dean could take Sam with him: curse him too, brand him with the Mark of Cain, take from him his death altogether and bind the two of them together forever. They'd stay that way, one with the other, two locks on the box that was to be held closed infinitely. Two locks... two men whose humanity would be twisted away by the curse, together in a cage where they'd tear each other apart for an eternity. But they'd be _together_ , and the world would be safe.

"I can't do it."

"Then there is nothing to be done. Thank you for the feast. You are quite the cook, Dean Winchester, I must tell you that."

"Wait."

He'd never forget what it felt like to condemn the one soul that had always shone the brightest for him, knowing that the day would come when they'd both be as twisted and dark - but before that time, perhaps there would still be solace. Perhaps there'd be a center to this storm like all the others, a calm in which they could still be human, still remember what love had felt like. Perhaps there would even be an end to it somewhere.

Ultimately, there was nothing Dean feared more than loneliness, but Sam had never hesitated standing with him through it.

No matter the cost.


End file.
